Friday, December 29, 2017

I love all the traditions we have surrounding Christmas. We had our annual Boxing Day morning at the church. The kids had a blast, Ava just walked all around everywhere and had so much fun. It was so pleasant.

That night we had a cousin/sibling gift exchange, dinner, and Bingo night. We gave Ross some candy machines and this first picture is the kids all lined up with their quarters (after cleaning the toy room) to get some candy. So fun!

They did a kids round of Bingo first. Tyler got 5 bingos! Ross and Karen had quite the set up for kids prizes. After the kids we put on a movie for them and the adults played Bingo and won gift cards. Such a fun tradition!

We also had an all adults night at Carrabbas that was delicious and so much fun.

Ava emptied my entire spice rack into her shopping cart. :)

I took the kids to the Bean Museum one afternoon this week. They always love going there so much.

They have a special display right now of a Titanaboa snake. So disgustingly huge. Tyler and Mckinley got to pet a real snake. Kallie didn't want to.

Cute smile from Ava!

Today we had our chaotic lunch at Pizza Factory. Always such a crazy time, but so much fun. Mckinley's friend Kenzey is spending the day with us today so she got to come. She is so much fun to have around.

The anticipation of Christmas is the best. Better than the actual day. We had so much fun looking forward to Christmas, listening to lots of Christmas music, and just being excited. The kids had their chocolate calendars from Grandpa, they wrapped their own toys to give to each other, and we had lots of fun family time. Saturday the 23rd we decided to take the kids swimming. We went to the Orem Rec. Tyler and Kallie had done so well in Park City without their floaties that we wanted to let them practice. Orem Rec was the perfect place to do it, they swam all over the place and never used their floaties. Tyler even jumped off the diving board 5 or 6 times! So brave. Ava was waving at all the lifeguards from her little floatie. We all had a blast. Such a great time.

That night we had a dinner with my family, I didn't take any pictures there, but we had a great time. The kids got to do a little white elephant game with dollar store presents my mom had bought. The food was amazing, and we got to skype with Ken and Kjersti and see their new baby boy.

My mom helped me turn this cross stitch into a pillow. It has been sitting in a box for 10 years or so and now it's a Christmas decoration. Yay!

Christmas Eve was on Sunday. We enjoyed having sacrament meeting only at Church, and then went over to Ross and Karen's for a lunch and nativity. We got to facetime with Grandma and Grandpa Salmon which was awesome. Shannon took this picture of us face timing with them. Ava was taking a nap.

The nativity. Kallie was the baby Jesus at this point and looks more like a dead corpse. Ha ha ha ha.

This was the first time our entire married life where we didn't go to my parents' on Christmas Eve since we had been the night before so we had the whole evening to ourselves and really enjoyed it. We had leftover Little Caesars for dinner, drove up to the University Mall and saw the lights, drove by the Bastian Mansion for more lights, went home and put out cookies for Santa and watched a Christmas movie. Kallie was the last one to fall asleep at 10:30 and Brandon and I finally could get everything ready and go to bed!

Riverwoods at Christmas time is the absolute best. The lights are awesome, parking is close, and the Santa there is the best. We go right when Santa gets there so the line isn't long at all. I think we were done with the entire thing in 30 minutes, but it is such a fun memory to make with the kids.

They had this lady singing live music on this stage and Tyler went up and was dancing all slow and sarcastic along to her Christmas music. It was so hilarious!!!

They had a fun display of ginger bread houses, one from each store in there. So fun to look at!

Tyler loves it when Brandon lets him "shave" (with the back of the razor).